Farewell

Hello to all my readers,

This semester has come to end which means I no longer have to update my blog every week. I am still unsure whether or not I will continue posting on this site, or if I want to make a new one on a completely different topic. I’ve learned so much about blogging throughout the semester, and I definitely enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I faced challenges here and there, but if it was too easy, what would I learn from the experience?

Blogging is definitely a full-time job in itself, and I encourage everyone to try it because you never know what you might learn. I didn’t just learn about blogging, I learned how to edit audio and video, become more comfortable with interviewing people and take some amazing photos. As a part of my beat I was able to get more involved in the Rowan student life because I was constantly attending events, taking pictures and recording things for my blog. I learned more about the university, and gained some connections I didn’t think I would when I first started. I am extremely thankful to have started this blog, and will forever remember my first time giving it a try. I will be sure to update you all if I decide to continue with this beat, or create a different beat.

Some of my favorite blog posts were:

1.) Video Post- Greek Week 2017

2.) Free Post- Relay for Life 2017

3.) Audio Post- Dean Jones

4.) Free Post- From New Member to President

5.) Photo Gallery- Dancing for a Cure

Thanks to everyone who followed along this semester!

The One, The Only, Noah Weinstein

 

Some say he’s the face of Rowan University and others know him from simply being at events he’s attended. Noah Weinstein is the man that almost every Rowan student knows. He’s the epitome of student life, and means what Rowan University stands for. If you ask any student at Rowan they may not personally know Noah, but they’ve heard of him.

The man, the myth, the legend: Noah Weinstein

Noah was an undergraduate student at Rowan University starting back in 2007, and hasn’t left since. He graduated with a degree in American Studies and a minor in Political Science. As an undergrad he was involved in many things on-campus including clubs relating to his major, the Student Government Association (SGA), Student University Programmers (SUP) and Rowan After Hours (RAH). Joining the big organizations like RAH, SUP and SGA really set him over the edge with involvement at Rowan. Not only did Noah participate in these clubs, he held Executive Board positions, and management positions in RAH, which is a paid on-campus job. He says “I love coming back to the Office of Student Activities because it’s my home, and what kick started my Rowan involvement.” At orientation Noah immediately got involved by showing interest in student activities. He claims, “I was basically a part of the Office of Student Activities before I was even a Rowan student.” One of his orientation leaders introduced him to this office, and he hasn’t been able to stay away since.

Noah speaking at a ProfTalk, sponsored by Leadership Rowan. “Noah is a great guy to get to know, he’s helped leadership rowan grow in so many ways and he’s always a great guest speaker to have,” says Gary Baker.

Gary Baker and Noah working together in the Office of Student Leadership Programs.

Some of his favorite events include Color Me Rowan Weekend, Profstock, Hollybash and Unified Sports. He said, “These events bring out so many students and I love the unity all students show when participating.” Unified Sports holds a special place in Noah’s heart because other than Student Activities this was another program he was greatly involved with. Unified Sports is a semester-long program which helps special needs students participate in sporting activities. Each Rowan student is put on various different teams with special needs students, and they compete in tournaments to see which team will move onto the national championship at the end of the semester. Even as a Rowan employee Noah is heavily involved with the program still.

This semester Noah was on the pink team for unified sport. His team came in second!

After graduating from Rowan, Noah was offered a job in the Academic Success Center working with students who are having trouble in certain classes. Noah also works with students who have disabilities, and continues to work with Student Activities. In the Office of Student Activities, Noah participates in almost all the RAH, SUP and SGA events.

Many students refer to Noah as the “face of Rowan University.” As I previously said, almost every student knows of Noah Weinstein. He always comes to any Rowan sponsored event, especially the sporting events. He also may not have joined Greek life as an undergraduate student, but he sure is heavily involved with this now. Almost all fraternities and sororities know Noah, and he’s helped at all Greek life events. Noah was even honored, this past weekend, by Theta Phi Alpha. Theta Phi Alpha is one of the sororities on-campus, and they invited Noah to their founder’s day celebration to honor him for all the dedication he’s shown their chapter. Noah said, “I love being involved with Greek life now because I realize how much fun it is, and everyone looks like they’re having a great time.”

The plaque Noah received when Theta Phi Alpha honored him at their founder’s day this past weekend.

Taking pictures with some of his friends in Theta Phi Alpha after they honored him. “Noah has always been a great friend to our organization, and we couldn’t be more thankful for him,” says Emily Thomas.

According to Noah, in the past 10 years Rowan University’s student life has changed exponentially. He’s watched the campus itself grow, and the amount of student involvement grow. He’s watched what events work, and don’t work. Lastly, he’s watched the spirit for the university in students continue to rise. “I thank Rowan University everyday for what it gave me, and I don’t think I’ll ever be able to pay it back,” says Noah. Make sure to get involved when coming to Rowan University, and if you need a little help I’m sure Noah will know EXACTLY what to get involved with!

 

*All photos were taken by myself*

Greek Week 2017

Every year students from Rowan University’s Greek life participate in a week long event called Greek Week. This week entails competitions each sorority and fraternity can compete in, and they battle it out to see who will come out on top. Each year one sorority pairs with one fraternity to beat the others and become champs, and also each organization has their own theme that goes with the theme of the week. This years theme was 90’s Nickelodeon shows.

Greek week has events such as a lip sync battle, banner making competiton, a skittle race and field day. Each event has a top 3 organizations who will win the points, and by the end of the week these points are added up to see the winning organizations! This years winners were Alpha Sigma Alpha and Phi Kappa Sigma. Greek week is a fun week filled with games, competition and Greek unity!

 

Relay For Life – Rowan Edition

This past weekend, April 7-8, Rowan University held its annual Relay For Life event honoring and supporting people who have been affected or lost someone due to cancer. Each year the Colleges Against Cancer society hosts this event, and hundreds of students fill the Rec Center gym from 6 PM to 6 AM. Any club from Greek life to honor societies to sports teams come out for this event.

Before Relay For Life each person participating is required to raise a certain amount of money with their team. You automatically donate when signing up for the event, and continue to raise money through the gofundme page included when you sign up. This year the Rowan students raised over $41,000 for a cancer research fund, and this was all before the event even started.

Students, Nicole Colonna and Arianne Bascara celebrating with other cancer survivors. 

During the event students were able to walk around the gym supporting those they know who have been affected by cancer, and this is a great way to bring students together as a unit because almost everyone knows someone affected by cancer. Over a couple thousand students attended this event through the 12 hours it ran. Don’t worry though, we weren’t just walking around the gym in circles the whole time. Although this was the main reason for Relay For Life, they also provided activities for students to do while participating in this event.

Emily Fishman and Arianne Bascara taking advantage of the photo props! 

One of the activities involved a pudding eating contest, which got pretty messy, but students were loving the idea. Many students gathered around as they watched fellow classmates or suite mates eat a cup of pudding as fast as they can. Zumba was also offered as an activity because why not keep students engaged and active during the middle of the night? Around midnight they did this because some people were starting to sit down, get tired and not staying as active as before.

Alpha Sigma Alpha and Alpha Chi Rho come together for a great picture to show their unity in the fight against cancer. 

Students were also able to take awesome pictures with signs and banners made by the Relay for Life volunteers. It was like a makeshift photo booth for students to take fun pictures, and share with their friends. Along with taking cool photos, they event hosted a station where they would provide haircuts for students willing to donate their hair to locks of love, and other organizations supporting cancer.

Emily DeSimone, Caitlin Musser, Kat Patterson and Alli Wierzbicki also taking advantage of some of the fun photo props! 

Lastly, the Relay for Life event did a victory lap for those who were cancer survivors. About 10 students walked around the track as their fellow classmates honored and supported them for surviving this horrible disease. One student, Nicole Colonna, was a cancer survivor herself. She recently suffered from Thyroid Cancer and had to get her Thyroid surgically removed. “It was weird to walk around that track because this is still all so new to me, but to know I have so much support from my fellow Rowan students, and family is what keeps me going,” she said as she completed her final lap around the track.

Medallion honoring those who have survived their fight against cancer. 

Relay for Life is an amazing event to be a part of, and it is such a great cause because we all know someone who was affected by cancer in some way. It is also a great way for student life to come together and raise thousands of dollars to help people in the future.

 

 

*All photos were provided by myself*

Learning to Budget and life skills from Katarina DeFelice

Katarina DeFelice is currently a senior Public Relations and Advertising double major at Rowan University, and originally from Pennsylvania. She also has a minor in new media. Katarina is heavily involved in the Public Relations Student Society of America serving as the current president, and has been a member since her freshman year. Her blog, Brideing on a Budget, focuses on her love of event planning and trying to plan the wedding of her dreams on a college student budget. This blog is her new one that she recently started writing about at the end of 2016 because she recently got engaged herself back in October.

Picture courtesy of Katti, from her Facebook.

I thought this blog would be beneficial for students to see because as we go through our college years huge life events happen and sometimes we need advice on how to handle them. Students might not necessarily get engaged and plan weddings, but this can show college students how someone deals with life events happening unexpectedly. Kattie writes all about how she’s trying to plan her wedding while balancing school, graduation and looking for employment after she graduates. You might be able to get a feel for how she’s preparing for post-graduation while reading this blog as well.

A beautiful shot of her ring she took.

She also maintains another blog, I Am Girl of Words, which focuses more on her personal self rather than showcasing something. She has been running this blog since 2012, and has different focuses each semester. This semester she is focusing a lot on her wedding, and again how to cope with planning one on a student budget. Her fiance is studying Biology and Athletic Training with a minor in Biochemistry at Millersville University, and includes blog posts about his life and dealing with wedding planning as he strives toward graduation as well.

When asking her the most challenging part of blogging she responded with managing a consistent posting schedule. She said she tried vlogging as well, but her love for writing soon took over and didn’t like vlogging as much. As graduation approaches she finds it hard to make time to post consistently because of all the assignments she has due and events going on as well.

Showing off her involvement at Organ Donor Day, an event sponsored by the Public Relations Student Society of America.

I’ve read multiple blog posts on both of her blogs, and find them helpful for me as a student even though I am not getting married nor graduating college yet. So even if her life doesn’t directly relate to yours I feel most students will find this beneficial because as students we know nothing about balancing a budget, and trying to make it in the real world.

Lastly, Kattie offered a piece of advice to people who don’t really know how to blog or know what to blog about. She said, she really encourages everyone to start blogging because you may not know you have something until you start writing!

Getting to Know the Dean Of Student Life – Richard Jones

Richard Jones is originally from Jacksonville, Florida and he attended Florida State University and graduated from the University of North Florida. He came to Rowan in 2008 working in the office of Residential Learning and University Housing helping students. He’s spoken at multiple Rowan sponsored events, and is frequently seen walking throughout campus. Almost every student knows who Dean Jones is because he is always making his appearance at different events happening on-campus. He still is heavily involved in the Residential Learning and University Housing offices, but his main focus now is working in the office of Orientation and Student Leadership Programs as the Vice President and Dean of Student Life.

Photo courtesy of Dean Jones

 

Nicole- Proud Moment

Dancing for a Cure

On Friday, March 3rd, Rowan University students danced all night in the Rec Center gym during their Annual Dance Marathon. The event is sponsored by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and co-sponsored by the Greek Affairs office at Rowan University. This dance helped raise money for the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and the students raised close to $45,000 altogether.

Students danced to some of their favorite current and throwback songs all night. The event lasted from 10 pm to 4 in the morning, and then they finally revealed the total amount raised. It was incredible to see so many people come together for one cause. They had activities going on all night from dance performances to laser tag to free t-shirts, and even helping the students dance by a small zumba lesson from Nikayla Pascual.

The DJ for the night was named Nelson Strickland. He’s mostly known for playing during campus wide events like RoGlow, but also for cranking the tunes in the basement of his fraternity, Tau Kappa Epsilon. He’s been a DJ for almost 5 years now, and has even started landing gigs outside of Rowan University and frat basements.

The Dance Marathon gave students a chance to get creative, and make artistic banners to hang behind their organizations section of the gym. Alpha Sigma Alpha created one punning their sororities motto as did other sororities as well. They were mostly used for a background for pictures, but made the gym look awesome altogether. Most the banners stated things like socking out cancer, or referred to saving the children. It was great to see the amount of effort these organizations put into creating each of the banners. 

Julio Silva, Jillian D’Amico and Haley Schellenger were sharing a laugh while taking a water break from the Dance Marathon. The Group fitness room in the Rec Center provided students with small snacks and water to refresh themselves while dancing the night away. Also, giving out free t-shirts to students who raised more than $25 toward the cause.

The 3D Dance Crew did a short performance for the students dancing all night. Their routine featured popping, locking and anything else hip-hop. 3D is frequently featured at most of Rowan’s events such as Greek life pagaents, RoGlow and even Hollybash. Presidet, Elizabeth Reuter, says “We’ve worked so hard to get to where we are, and most students respect us in a great way. I’m so proud to be apart of this.” The performance offered students a small cool down before getting back to the dancing. 

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Being behind the DJ booth takes on a whole new perspective of the Dance Marathon because I could see almost everyone in the gym enjoying the songs being played, and the company they were around. Almost every sorority and fraternity was there so it provided an opportunity to show how supportive greek life is toward the campus and CHOP. Alpha Sigma Tau, Rowan’s newest sorority, raised the most money ringing in at a little over $7,000 for CHOP.

Commuters Just Wanna Have Fu-un

The best college experiences usually result from getting involved on campus because you meet so many more people than you would if you just stayed in your dorm all four years. As a commuter it is even harder to meet people and get involved because you aren’t living on campus nor are you able to make friends as easily. For residents they get to know their roommates and people living on their hallways, but commuters are still sharing bathrooms with their siblings. Although it may be hard at first, it really isn’t too bad if you put yourself out there.

As a commuter myself I immediately got involved with Leadership Rowan, which led to me to a lot of other organizations on campus. If you get involved with one club, it is very easy to hear about others you may be interested in.

Some students let the fact that they commute keep them from joining a club, sports team or even Greek life. They feel like they don’t have time because they’re so busy, or it is a pain to drive back and forth to school. These are justifiable setbacks, but they shouldn’t keep you from doing anything. College is supposed to be the best time of your life, and living at home may not be as fun as living on campus sometimes but if you make friends early on it’ll become much easier to have the perks of on campus living while still commuting.

Alexa Elliot, junior Elementary Education major from Elk Township, is a commuter at Rowan University. She has commuted all three years so far, and will actually be living on campus for her senior year. “It was hard to get involved in the beginning, but I put myself out there as much as I could because I knew it would benefit me in the long run.” Since joining Leadership Rowan during her freshman year she’s had a plethora of opportunities arise. Leadership Rowan helped her get involved with SAA, the Student Alumni Association, and she’s been able to not only make connections with other Rowan students but with alumni as well. “I like being able to build Prof Pride, and all the connections I form with students and administrators,” she said.

Elliot also touched on the fact that it wasn’t too much on her schedule when she would have to drive back and forth for meetings, especially on weekends, “I’ve learned to manage my time better because I have to worry about getting my school work done, and also being able to go to meetings for all the organizations/clubs I am a part of” said Elliot.

I hope other commuters take advantage of the opportunities Alexa did, it may not be the same clubs or organizations but she put herself out there and that is the most important thing. Elliot also said that she met all her friends through SAA, and wouldn’t have the opportunity to live in a house off-campus next year if it wasn’t for meeting them. “I’m very thankful I get to spend my senior year with the people who helped me start my freshman year, and have stayed with me for the past three years,” said Alexa. You never know what can happen from freshman to senior especially because you are meeting so many people a day.

My advice to all commuters is to not be afraid to get involved because earning all the same perks as a student who lives on campus is achievable if you put yourself out there, and motivate yourself. People make it seem like being a commuter is the end of the world, and don’t enjoy it as much as they could. “I’m very big in making the best out of any situation, so that is what I did,” said Alexa. “You’re not just paying to get a degree, take advantage of all the benefits it comes with.”

Once a Rowan Student, Always a Rowan Student

This past week I had the pleasure to interview a person I feel embodies positivity, generosity, kindness, and Rowan student life all in one. Gary Baker, head of the Orientation Staff and Leadership Rowan, was the guy I chose. I’ve worked very closely with Gary in the past, and I knew he was the one to talk to regarding student life at Rowan.

Gary is from Midland Park, New Jersey in Bergen County, where his parents still reside today. He started his undergraduate career at Rowan University, originally coming in undecided but by his sophomore year was majoring in Journalism. Gary works with a few different programs on-campus such as all the Leadership Rowan programs/events, for example the Freshman Leadership Involvement Program (FLIP), First-year Connection Leadership (FCL), Proftalks, and the Peer Referral and Orientation Staff (PROS). Among those he also started the Unified Sports program at Rowan. Gary always had a passion for sports, and was a very big presence in the Rec Center during his undergraduate career so this was the perfect program for him. Unified Sports helps special needs kids stay active as they play soccer in the fall and basketball in the spring, composed of a team with Rowan students. They host big events like Fans in the Stands to bring more Rowan students to Unified Sports by cheering them on from the side lines.

Gary’s first time leading the Freshman Connection Leadership program

The first question I asked Gary was “If you could look at yourself 10 years ago vs. now, would you expect be in the same place you are now?” As a Journalism major, Gary never expected himself to end up back at his Alma matter. He never thought he would be back at Rowan, but it “fell into my lap” said Gary. He also said “I don’t think I would ever have seen myself in an office in Savitz Hall helping students.” The biggest piece of advice he can only offer here is to keep your options open!

The next question I asked was, what was your favorite experience as an undergraduate student? He talked all about his involvement at the Rec Center because it was one of his passions being able to stay active and play basketball a lot. Also, combining this with joining a fraternity. His fraternity went from being un-athletic and losing every game to winning the 3 on 3 basketball championship year after year. “It was cool to see my two world’s collide,” said Gary.

Gary with some students at a Leadership Conference

Gary loves being able to see all the students grow throughout the years especially working with two transfer and freshman programs. This led into my next two questions which were, what is the most rewarding part of your job and how is it seeing students grow from freshman year to senior year? Gary says it’s weird to see how each one of my students go into multiple different directions. “Some start working as Ambassadors, RA’s, running for SGA president, while others excel in academics, or being D3 championship athletes.” He laughed at the fact that he would like to take credit for how independent the students become because they went through his freshman program first. He also talked about being able to give back to the school that gave him everything is one of the biggest rewards.

The Peer Referral and Orientation Staff

Next, I asked him to give advice to any student who is afraid to get involved at school because sometimes people don’t know how to get started and need a little push. He said “Try something new” if you aren’t willing to put yourself out there you are never going to enjoy yourself. He talked about all the different possibilities such as clubs for you majors, student government, leadership rowan, Greek life and a bunch of other things as well. There’s so many opportunities to find a personal connection with something, especially at a university that is expanding.

Lastly, we talked about how much getting involved effects your college experience as a whole. I thing Gary put it in the best words, he said “If you go to school just for academics, yeah you’ll get your degree, but you wouldn’t have gotten your money’s worth.” In reality it’s one hundred percent true. If you aren’t getting involved you won’t have anything new to put on your resume and you can’t use those experiences to benefit you in the future. Being a college student is all about learning how to benefit yourself once you graduate, and by joining clubs and other organizations you learn to work with others in a different way.

Throughout the interview I could tell Gary was thankful for his experiences and where he ended up today because it put him right back at Rowan University doing things he originally loved doing while an undergraduate student. Staying involved, and opening yourself to new opportunities can help you in so many ways.

At the Leadership Title XI Summit last April